The Quick and Easy Home Networking DIY

This do it yourself home networking guide will be sufficient to set up your own network easily. To set up a good network you will need only $100 and a few hours to set up.

Anyone from IT industry has one common question from their friends and family “How can I set up my home network”. Today almost everything in networking is easy with plug-and-play technology. Even with this technology home networking is confusing for those who are not from IT background. Although it is very easy to set up once you understand the basics and your requirement.

First of all, you need to know exactly what you want your home network to be capable of. For a basic home network you may need to share internet connection between two or more systems, maybe a printer and scanner too. You may need a wireless or wired connection, most of the people prefer to use wireless connection these days, since they are convenient.

Following are few important things you should consider while making a home network:

Setting up a home netowork

Making a Home Network

Everything You Need

Wireless Router

Most of the network is a mixture of wired and wireless connections. It means that you will need a wireless router, which you can get easily in your local market. Although these are not expensive but with the addition of extra functions it may get expensive. A simple wireless router would be good for a home network and it will cost you approx. $40. This router acts as the base or hub on your network. All the connections from systems in the network meets here, actual data transfer takes place here.

Internet Connection

The incoming internet connection is required to connect all the systems to an internet network. The incoming internet connection may come through a modem, DSL cable, Cable, or wireless connection which is received centrally by a small box that has an output and an input connection. The output will be in CAT5 cable; the router has clearly marked input and output port. The input connection should be plugged into the input port of the router and output port will connect to your systems to share the internet. Once both ports are connected to the respective device, you will be able to share the internet connection with all systems.

Computers

Most of the computer systems come with inbuilt wireless connectivity and Ethernet network communication card. The systems are completely ready for wired network connections, you just have to plug in the cable and you will be using the internet. WI-FI connection may need to be configured sometimes. If you are using Windows or Apple OS the connection wizard will pop up automatically and you will be able to complete the setting. If you are using Linux, you will have to run the networking application to establish a connection.

Printers

Sharing the printers is very easy, you have to connect the printer with one of the system on the network. Once you switch it to sharing mode it will be shared to all systems on the network, you may have to install the device driver software on each system. You will get a notification if this is required for the system. Latest printers may not need to install the driver software, some printers can be plugged into the network themselves, and computer is not required for such printers to be connected.

Other devices

Once this setup is complete, you will be able to connect any device to your network and share internet. Devices like DVR boxes, Game Consoles, Netflix receivers, and many more. Most of the devices will be easy to connect and configure with the WI-FI or wired connections.

Troubleshooting

Now you have completed the setup, you need to know about the troubleshooting. Most common with the WI-FI networks is the range. Although a wireless router is capable to cover a small house, but if you get any problem with range you can extend it by adding extra routers or repeaters. You may also extend the wire to those areas and use the wired network.

At some point due to the poor naming convention for an individual computer you may get problems like “computers can not communicate to the internet” rises. Make sure that every setting and name convention is spelled correctly and is same on all systems.

You may get problem like “IP address conflict” in this case two system gets the same IP address when the system is set to get IP address dynamically. To fix this you should input the fixed IP address for host system which is usually on all the times and set all systems to dynamic.

We have a home network and it's great to have a shared drive for our files. It means that no matter what computer I'm on, I can always access an article I need. Don't know how we survived years ago, lol.